The inventive concepts described herein relate to a semiconductor memory device, and more particularly, relate to a flash memory device and a word line voltage generating method thereof.
Semiconductor memory devices may be classified into volatile semiconductor memory devices and nonvolatile semiconductor memory devices. Volatile semiconductor memory devices may perform read and write operations at high speed, while contents stored therein may be lost when the devices are powered-off. Nonvolatile semiconductor memory devices may retain contents stored therein even when powered-off. For this reason, nonvolatile semiconductor memory devices may be used to store contents to be retained regardless of whether the devices are powered on or off.
Nonvolatile semiconductor memory devices may include a mask read-only memory (MROM), a programmable ROM (PROM), an erasable programmable ROM (EPROM), an electrically erasable programmable ROM (EEPROM), etc.
A flash memory device may be a typical nonvolatile memory device. A flash memory device may be widely used as the voice and image storing media of information apparatuses such as a computer, a cellular phone, a PDA, a digital camera, a camcorder, a voice recorder, an MP3 player, a handheld PC, a game machine, a facsimile, a scanner, a printer, etc. Such information apparatuses may be used as a host, respectively.
As high integration memory devices have recently become increasingly required, multi-bit memory devices storing multi-bit data in a memory cell have become more common.